September 2010 posts

September 30, 2010

Golly, it's been a long time since I've submitted anything for publication in any book or magazine. Recently, I was notified by Angela & Sarah that I would have art published in issue 10 of Pasticcio Quartz. At last, issue 10 has been released by Lulu publishing company.

Pasticcio Quartz by Angela Cartwright & Sara Fishburn

This renown publication, Pasticcio Quartz, is the fabulous creation of the multi-talented, dynamic duo Angela Cartwright and Sarah Fishburn. There have been 10 artful, insightful, and delightful issues so far. Here is a slide show of some of the past issues:

Our 10th Issue has 72 brilliant, jam-packed pages! A fabulous outsider artist from New Mexico (Kelly Moore), an illustrator's dream of a paper doll designer (Donald Hendricks), an interview with inimitable NYC artist and founder of The Pulse (Seth Apter), and a glimpse of a well-known LA actress's luscious California cottage! Rubber stamping (Yes, it's alive and doing very very well!) and a peek into the strange and fascinating worlds of dolls, puppets, and Harajuku fashion. And that's just the beginning...

The gallery of work by guest artists, "Palais D'Art," has 20 pages of large images. I was honored to have one of these pages. Thank you Angela and Sarah.

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Would you like to see the "before" pictures of my digital manipulation, Junior's?

My Original Photo

Well, I started with my digital photo of an old building in downtown Conroe, TX and this image of a bicycle:

Original Bike Image

Original photo with original bike image added

Bike with Drop Shadow

First, using Photoshop, I added the bike to the original photo and put in a drop shadow for the bike to make it look more realistic. Then I gussied it up with color, grunge, an added image to window, vingnetting, etc.

JUNIOR'S, Digital Manipulation

(Click image for bigger look-see of details)

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As we digital artists inevitably do, I took the finished photo through various "morphs" in Photoshop just to see what would happen. Though this digital photo manipulation was done long before I had taken any of the digital art classes, I did know how to play around and see what filters, adjustments, or added layers would do. These were done prior to adding the window logo and the grunge effects to the photo:

(Larger versions of these variations can be seen by clicking an image above.)

September 18, 2010

Cross of Salvation, Taken with my iPhone in the First Christian Church courtyard, Huntsville TX

While I was spending so much time on digital art, I was also involved in our church's latest art ministry project. We are working on a found object nativity to be exhibited in the courtyard of the church during the Christmas season.

Raw Materials

What is a found object nativity, you ask? Well, we had people drop off their junk which we piled in the middle of our art studio floor at church. Then anyone who wants to can join us in looking over the trash and signing up to put some of it together in a found object sculpture of someone or something that would have been at the scene of Jesus' birth.

Kyle Holds Time in a Hand

Here, we have our minister working on his large angel. He is about to put the hand holding the clock at the end of the thick metal mesh arm. He fashioned wire as a hand with fingers, wrapped smaller wire around each "finger" and the palm to make the hand. Very talented guy, our Kyle.

Kyle's Angel's Other Hand

Molly Assists Her Angel

Molly's husband looks on as she makes adjustments to her angel's wings while her "camel" awaits attention behind her. This angel gets my award for best in show so far - could be because she is the only completed figure so far. It's a beauty for sure. Molly has a gift for metal sculpture.

Conner Fashions His Wise Man

Isn't that beard that Conner made just the best idea ever? He used many little springs of varying sizes to make rows of "beard" so it will move as you jiggle it. Of course it IS for the wise man and not for him LOL. Very clever boy, that Conner.

Michael Had a Little Lamb, Little Lamb, Little . . .

Mike dropped by one day and created a darling little lamb for the scene. How fun and how quickly he finished it. Hope he makes it back to do something else with us. (You can see Kyle here too, working on the other hand for his angel which will hold a horn.)

Sally Changes the Oil?

I'm lying on the floor trying to attach something to the bottom of my Wise Man. He is made from a crock pot, a cake pan, and several unidentifiable pieces of debris.

Have Junk, Will Create

We have a couple of other pieces in the works - Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, a goat? I'll try to have more pictures later. Meanwhile, why don't you come out and join us some Saturday... we'll be working every week from now until Christmas!

That is all the processing in the iPhone. Next, Synced iPhone to iPhoto on computer and opened in Photoshop. [Tip: to open a photo from iPhoto to Photoshop, just click and drag the image from iPhoto onto the icon for Photoshop on your computer - right over the icon on the dock if you have Photoshop in your dock.]

Part 2 - Photoshop CS5

Layer 1 - Background: From Photoshop, open the Daisy as processed with apps in the iPhone.

Image from iPHone - Photoshop Background layer

Layer 2 - Background: Duplicated background layer (Normal 100%)

Layer 3 - Adj layer: Brightness -150/contrast +17 to add detail to the
center - with layer mask to knock out all but center of flower (Normal
100%)

Layer 6 - Texture: Added texture image (Aged Canvas from msbailey who created it from
textures by jfransis and playing with brushes (Used Pin Light blending style at 100% opacity.)

Aged Canvas - Texture by MSBailey

BTW, I have tip about a shortcut when adding texture layers. When you want the texture to be the exact same size as the image your adding it to just do this:

With your base image open, open the texture you want to use.

Before you drag the texture over and with the texture window active, go to the menu, Image - Image Size, which brings up an Image Size pop-up window. Don't do anything in that pop-up window.

With the pop-up window still active, Go to the menu, Window, and scroll to the bottom of the menu choices to click on the name of the base image that you want to add the texture to. If you notice, when you click on that selection, the dimensions in the Image Size pop-up window changed to the exact dimensions of the base image! Now you're good to go and drag the texture over to the base image and it will fit exactly.

Now that look like a lot when you see it written but actually it is way faster than trying to drag all the edges of the the texture to meet the edges of the base image AFTER you drag it over. It's just

Open the texture.

Open Image Size menu.

Open Window menu and select the base document. Done

Now back to my LOVE DAISY DIARY:

HERE COMES THE SURPRISE!!!

When the texture was added using Pin Light at 100%, it looked like this and I was so surprised and delighted:

Texture + Pin Light 100% = JOSS PAPER!!

I was so thrilled. It made the background look as if it had Chinese "Joss
paper" over it!!! Of course it made the center look like that, too, but I knew I could mask that out. I don't know why the Pin Light blending mode left the petals as they were but I was excited that it did. After masking the parts I didn't want to have "Joss paper," it looked like this:

Daisy after the Aged Canvas texture was added

Layer 7 - Adj Layer:Vibrance blending mode added, which I couldn't tell made a difference really but I imagined I could so I kept the layer. LOL.

Layer 8 - Handwriting texture: vintage letter 1915 (my image - scanned in to computer) - (Divide blending mode at 83% opacity to make light writing texture on petals. Then a layer mask was used to mask most of it out.

Dear Charles - texture

This layer was extremely subtle. If you look closely, you will see some faint white lines of writing on the petals (you will probably have to click on the image to get a bigger version in order to see the white lines):

Image after the handwriting layer was applied (Click on image to see effect.)

Layer 9 - Brush: Stamped Linen brush in a size big enough to cover the document. The linen brush used is by Caryl Wyatt. It was applied at low brush opacity and a layer mask was used to blot most of it out so texture would be subtle.

Theffec t of the linen brush is also very subtle and you will again have to click on the image to get a larger version in order to see it.

Linen Brush by Caryl Wyatt

Image after the linen brush was applied. (Click on image to see the effect.)

Layer 10 - Stamp Visible: Made a Stamp Visible layer [Shift-Option-Command-E.] Stamp Visible is like
flattening the image but it leaves the layers you made so that you
could come back and revise them if you ever wanted to do that. Here is
what the layers palette looks like with the Stamp Visible layer on top
and all the creation layers turned off:

Layer 11 - Vignette: Made a selection with the oval selection tool. Inversed the selection by going to menu, Select - Inverse. Applied black color with large, soft brush (normal 100%) on very low brush opacity. This was very subtle and in the final image it blends with the effect of the burn tool I used on all the edges.

Layer 13 - Image layer: Added image of Chinese chop in upper left corner (Darker Color blending style at 44% opacity to blend with background) and layer mask to mask out flower. [Thanks to Aneel Nazareth for permission to use his chop.]

Layer 17 - Type: Added a type layer for copyright symbol [option-G on keyboard for most fonts (Normal blending style at 20% opacity) Because I didn't put the copyright emblem in my custom signature brush, I have to put it in separately.

Here is what the layers with the chops and signature look like:

Layers 18, 19, 20 - Images: The petals of the flowers looked bare compared to the background, so Chinese writing was put over the petals of the flower. (Overlay blending style at varying opacities from 91% - 100%) The letters had to be pieced, rotated, masked with layer masks, and who knows what else to get thee writing on apporpriate areas of the petals of the flower. So after all was said and done, three layers had been used to accomplish this:

Three layers of chinese writing in the petals of the flower.

Layer 21 - Stamp Visible: After making this stamp visible layer, I used the burn tool to darken the outside edges of the whole image:

Final Image after 25 layers (including the layers done in the iPhone)

Hope you enjoyed this "diary" entry in the journal of a LOVE DAISY which was actually little trip down the memory lane of creation. Whew!

This digital collage (Love Daisy) ended up being very complex (25 layers - my most layers so far in a single image) and I switched back and forth between both my iPhone and Photoshop to create it. I plan to post all the steps I went through to create it so that my friends, especially my friends in digital manipulations classes, can see how it was done. so stay tuned.